A BAROQUE THEATER
FRANCOIS COUPERIN
Les Nations (1726)
Domitille Gilon | Stéphan Dudermel Simon Pierre
Violins
Alexis Kossenko, Georges Barthel
Traverso
Benoit Laurent, Antoine Torunczyk
Oboe
Ronald Martin Alonso
Viola da Gamba
Diego Salamanca
Theorbo
Javier Zaffra
Bassoon
Thomas Soltani
Harpsichord
For la Fontaine, beauty is arresting and commands admiration, while grace secretly penetrates the soul to strike a chord there. It is the distinction Couperin makes between “being moved” and “being surprised”. In 1690, probably inspired by the work of Corelli, who had already published three books of trio sonatas (church sonatas, 1681 and 1689, chamber sonatas, 1685), he composed his first pieces of chamber music, a very fashionable genre in Paris at that time: six sonatas: five trio sonatas, La Pucelle, La Steinkerque, La Visionnaire, L'Astrée et La Superbe, and and one quartet sonata, La Sultane, which 36 years later would give rise to the collection Les Nations, with its different “sonades”, as he liked to call them, thus emphasizing his wish to naturalise into French the source of his inspiration from the other side of the Alps. La Pucelle became La Françoise; La Visionnaire, L'Espagnole; and L'Astrée, La Piémontaise.